Tag Archives: harriet harman

Brown at 10: the authoritative account – which lays into Ed Balls

By Mark Pack | Published 30th November 2011 - 3:54 pm

When it first came out Brown at 10 by Anthony Seldon and Guy Lodge was extremely well received for its authoritative detail and the revised paperback edition maintains that standard well. With Seldon being one of the founders of the modern school of contemporary history, it is no surprise that the book follows the thorough, heavily documented approach contemporary historians strive for – with over 1 million words of interviews recorded for posterity (even if many are, for the next 30 years, withheld from public view) and extensive access to private diaries.

The huge depth of research is accompanied by …

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DPMQs: “Grotesque” and “beneath contempt” – Clegg on the Milly Dowler phone hacking allegations

By Paul Walter | Published 5th July 2011 - 8:45 pm

The highest profile issue at Deputy Prime Minister’s questions today was the issue of press phone hacking in the light of the allegations concerning Milly Dowler and the News of the World.

Harriet Harman asked Nick Clegg to back Ed Miliband’s call for a general public inquiry into illegality in the newspaper industry. As someone has said, this is a bit like holding an inquiry into why we get bad weather. In a sign of divisions within Labour, Chris Bryant, in contrast, has called for a more narrow inquiry.

Nick Clegg stopped short of backing an inquiry but, instead, emphasised the importance …

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Posted in Parliament | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 29 Comments

Tim Farron asks Labour where they stand on Phil Woolas

By Helen Duffett | Published 19th November 2010 - 4:42 pm

From a party news release:

Liberal Democrat Party President-Elect Tim Farron has written to the General Secretary of the Labour Party, Ray Collins, asking him to clarify the Labour Party’s position on Phil Woolas following criticism of Harriet Harman’s decision to suspend him by a number of backbench MPs.

The full text of the letter is below:

Dear General Secretary,

Firstly may I offer you my heartfelt congratulations on the news of your elevation to the House of Lords.

However, I am writing to you to raise the matter of the judgement of the Election Court in Oldham East and Saddleworth on November 5th and

…

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PMQS: Cameron promised faster wheels amidst squeaky bums

By Paul Walter | Published 17th November 2010 - 4:52 pm

What a relief! For a change, Prime Minister’s Questions gave more cause for Tories to be uneasy than it did for LibDems. Don’t get me wrong, LibDems care passionately about frontline policing. Of course they do. But the Tories tend to see it as more of a cojones (or should I invent the adjective “cojonal” here?) measurement issue – it’s closer to the nerve with them. So I think there must have been a lot of uncomfortable shifting around on the benches behind David Cameron today. “Squeaky bum time”, as Sir Alex might put it.

For once there was a good …

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Posted in PMQs | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

PMQs: Albatross! Albatross! Come and get your lovely Albatross!

By Paul Walter | Published 10th November 2010 - 8:24 pm

Rarely, both the Prime Minister and the Opposition leader had reason to be absent from Prime Minister’s Questions today. So it was dear Harriet versus the Cleggster.

As an added twist, it turned into a “Higher Education Special”, in part spurred by the student demonstrations outside parliament as the session was unfolding. There were no less than ten questions on higher education. My, the Labour whips had been busy. Sadly this meant less time for the constituency issues often raised by MPs.

I witnessed the session live via Twitter, where Nick Clegg received a rather jaundiced reception – to put it mildly. …

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Posted in PMQs | Also tagged , , , , | 44 Comments

Opinion: Gentlemen! A little less bitching, please

By Sophie Bridger | Published 10th November 2010 - 11:57 am

For a party that prides itself on its stance on gender equality, we still have a lot of work to do. Sure, we campaign for greater and more flexible parental leave, and an end to unacknowledged airbrushing. We rightly refuse to acknowledge patronising all women shortlists, both in the party as a whole, and within Liberal Youth. We’ve certainly got a lot better at representation – a third of our target seat candidates in the last election were women. But women make up more than 50% of our population, and around 45% of our membership. A third is simply not …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , | 18 Comments

The Phil Woolas judgement: Arthur Balfour was right

By Mark Pack | Published 8th November 2010 - 8:55 am

The election offence for which Phil Woolas’s election was overturned is, deliberately and rightly, drawn narrowly and precisely (a point Nich Starling made very robustly on his blog and which Iain has also made on Lib Dem Voice).

The law gives very broad scope to contentious and aggressive claims, partly because – as Arthur Balfour succinctly put it when pushed to expand the law in 1905, “It is evidently not easy to go further, if only because of the difficulty of distinguishing between the mis-statements which are due to malice and those which are due to mere stupidity.”

The …

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How dare she follow the rules, thunders Mail on Sunday

By Iain Roberts | Published 25th July 2010 - 11:45 am

In a thundering attack this morning, the Mail on Sunday lays into Harriet Harman, acting leader of of the Labour party for…erm… doing nothing wrong at all.

Ms Harman, it appears, accepted money legally and properly given by a Labour Party supporter and then, as is one of the jobs of an MP, assisted the same person with a problem.

The whole affair, which the Mail on Sunday would really like you to think is some sort of sordid scandal, is summed up in the first few paragaphs of their story:

Harriet Harman was last night facing damaging claims that she lobbied

…

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Posted in Op-eds | 6 Comments

Opinion: John Prescott and the unions, voices of Labour’s rapid decline

By Daniel Furr | Published 11th July 2010 - 9:20 am

Labour is not taking to opposition very well. Partisan points of orders, revisionist attitudes to the fiscal situation and demanding the coalition praises their formers leaders. And now we see Labour figures demanding voters to see a referendum, on the principle of a fairer voting system, as a “confidence vote on the coalition.”

By asking the public for their ideas and recommendations for public sector cuts, the Coalition Government has intelligently put the Labour party in an uncomfortable place. The unions are threatening general strikes and the average voter recognises the ideological and partisan attitude of the union movement. The “union …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , | 39 Comments

PMQs: Prime Minister’s tennis

By Paul Walter | Published 16th June 2010 - 5:50 pm

Prime Minister’s Questions today was preceded by Scottish Questions, with our man in the chair. So we had a real bonus today, LibDemmy Chaps and Chapesses ! Nick Clegg on Cameron’s right and the large granite-like figure of Michael Moore on the left. For it was indeed he – “Most Handsome LibDem MP 1997 -2004” or “1997 – present day” for some, I’m told. Pass the smelling salts – the intoxication of power is overcoming me!

Talking of people on the front bench behind Cameron, they ought to realise that the camera picks them up. They seem to think if they …

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PMQs: Hattie tries to throw a “stinger” in front of voting reform

By Paul Walter | Published 9th June 2010 - 4:20 pm

Prime Minister’s Questions is definitely becoming more subdued these days. The bellowing and ya-boo atmosphere has reduced by about 80% since the election. The Cumbrian shootings have dominated both sessions so far, which has added to the quietish feeling.

Harriet Harman has suddenly developed an interest in the electoral roll and the fact that “3.5 million people” who could be on it, aren’t. Fascinating. She seems to have suddenly come up with this as a reason to throw a sort of police “stinger” in front of voting reform – or at least constituency boundary re-drawing. She seems to have forgotten that her party was in power for thirteen years. Why didn’t they do something about electoral registration then? And, as David Cameron retorted, the last election was fought on recently redrawn boundaries anyway – which rather kiboshed Hattie’s argument.

Harman then had a go about CCTV. David Cameron went off on one, ending up about rights to enter people’s houses. He did make some good points about civil liberties during which Nick Clegg nodded very strongly. Harman raised an estate on her patch where they want CCTV coverage. Cameron said it was all about proportionality. If only he could say that about voting reform.

Good joke from Cameron:

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Posted in PMQs | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 42 Comments

PMQs: Hattie opens up the Coalition’s Grand Canyon

By Paul Walter | Published 2nd June 2010 - 3:58 pm

I feel as though Norris McWhirter (late of the Guinness Book of Records) ought to have been kneeling at the foot of the Speaker’s Chair with his stopwatch for this momentous Prime Minister’s Questions. There were several records or firsts being set. The first coalition PMQs ever, I would suggest (I doubt whether Winnie or Ramsay or our David held such events). The first with Liberal Democrats on the government benches. The first with a party sporting its second female leader (Margaret Beckett was acting Labour leader after John Smith died). And it’s 13 long years since we had …

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Posted in PMQs | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

Daily View 2×2: 6 December 2009

By Mark Pack | Published 6th December 2009 - 7:00 am

It’s Sunday. It’s 7am. It’s time for a special Alan-rich (or is it Steve?) YouTube treat, but first the blogs and the news.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

  • The truth may not be out there after all: Peter Black reports on the Ministry of Defence winding down its UFO hunting activities. The fight on terrorism has been used to justify all sorts of policies, though the argument (made by someone Peter quotes) that UFO hunting is essential to the fight against terrorism is a new one to me.
  • ACPO U-turn on photographers and stop and search: But talking of absurdities done in the name of fighting terrorism, Carl Minns has welcome news on the police deciding that they’ve gone too far in stopping people taking photos.

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

2 Big Stories

Harman attacks Tory tax break ‘for philanderers’

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Daily View 2×2: 20 November 2009

By Helen Duffett | Published 20th November 2009 - 7:00 am

Welcome, Daily Viewers, to November 20th; it’s 17 years since fire broke out at Windsor Castle, causing tens of millions of pounds worth of damage. It’s also 24 years since Microsoft released Windows 1.0.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

  • The Isms of Cruddas Giles Wilkes at Freethinking Economist on why it’s not enough to think about thinkers.
  • The forgotten work and the financial penalties for women as primary carers – by Jane Watkinson at My Liberal Democrat Political Ramblings.

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

2 Big Stories


Harriet Harman to be prosecuted for alleged driving offences

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Daily View 2×2: 5 October 2009

By Stephen Tall | Published 5th October 2009 - 9:50 am

2 Big Stories


Tory conference opens, and it’s time to party like it’s 1994

A few thousand Tories are converging on Manchester today, with two issues dominating discussion: Europe and welfare cuts. Ah, and there we were thinking The Major Years were but a distant memory.

On a more positive note, the Tories will be singing today from the localism song-book, with Caroline Spelman championing the party’s conversion to local control of local services – an interesting about-turn for an MP who opposed Scottish and Welsh devolution, and believes central government should impose council tax freezes from Whitehall.

Ministerial …

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